although i have ALREADY GOOGLED IT !!...i can't seem to come to any conclusions as to whats the difference between a directory and a link farm. LINK FARM....as described here ://www.webopedia.com/TERM/L/link_farming.html The process of exchanging reciprocal links with Web sites in order to increase search engine optimization. The idea behind link farming is to increase the number of sites that link to yours because search engines such as Google rank sites according to, among other things, the quality and quantity of sites that link to yours. In theory, the more sites that link to yours, the higher your ranking in the search engine results will be because the more links indicate a higher level of popularity among users of the Internet. sounds just like a directory to me ??? not necessarily a TARGETTED directory...but a directory all the same
You buy a field and plant some A Href seeds. Water it and by August you can harvest the crop. That's a link farm. On a more serious note a link farm is a site that is only there for attempting an increase of link popularity to others. Mostly unorganised and horrible to look at. (And ironically they often don't yield much anyway.) Many directories are just that without any added value to visitors. A lot of it is grey area though.
It's curious that Webopedia defines a Link Fark as a site engaged in recipricol linking. The original Link Farms were sites that contained long lists of links to sites, but contained no title, descriptions or other text. They were designed strictly to provide links. Typically, they contained hundreds of links per page. Here is a classic Link Farm that has been around for many years. You may even find your domain listed there. I don't know how they gather their info, but about 50% of the domains I've checked could be found on this Link Farm. http://www.snn.gr/com/e/e_055500_com.html Some directories do indeed resemble Link Farms.
A Link Farm is a particular form of 'collusion strategy' normally identified because it involves the automatic generation of a user's links page. However because there are now so few true Link Farms in existence the term has fallen into general use as a euphemism for any kind of formal link exchange program. Collusion strategies are better defined by their topology and I posted some information on this in the forum some weeks ago. In case you missed it and are interested - Collusion Topologies. - Michael
unfortunately that was as helpful as a chocolate teapot to someone with my poor understanding of quantum collusion theory. so directories are link farms? and changing the subject slightly, did that mean that the co-op could be understood to be a link farm, or not?
I am sorry you did not find it helpful and I will try to avoid posting in your threads in future. - Michael
Directory link dumps are today’s modern link farms. Useless “link dumps†hide their true identity and nature with the umbrella title “Directory.†Google is becoming more and more disenfranchised with endless directories with the same blah-blah-blah categories and everyday links. Maybe that is why so many sites are dropping with the Georgia update of 2005. D
OK. _________ So any directory that gets beyond a certain size, or PR could in effect be penalised by google eventually, for being a link farm? I was under the impression that link farms 'FARM' out your links to other pages or sites? If i just built a site full of links to sites that i like...say 10,000 sites, would that be considered a link farm? even if no payment or reciprocal was asked?
You need to look at the structure and see if the site has any usefulness to it. If you can't make sense out of something, chances are that the search engine spiders won't be able to make sense out of it either. There are a lot of fine lines and grey areas out there. You need to use your instinct sometimes to determine if a site is going places or pure garbage.
i have a great new business idea... (as far as i can tell), but its annoying there's so much grey area. difficult to make a business plan with something that could be written off by google. just 'cos its in the grey area.
Well, everything grey will lead to either black or white down the line. What matters is where it's going long term or can go rather ...
a link farm is something that exists on a competitors site if its on your site its a resource directory